In your opinion, when was the official start of the dead puck era?

[TimStrickland]

The Devils cup win in 1995 ?
The Florida Panthers cup run in 1996?

Personally, the dead puck era really began in october 1997. The first season of the dead puck era was 1997-98. It was the season where teams like the Sabres, Devils, Stars had success with the trap and most teams in the league, except colorado and a few other run and gun fellow renegades, followed their defensive-minded ways. Low scoring games were the norm. Scoring dried up dramatically. Goaltenders dominated(Hasek, Joseph, Belfour, etc), 2nd season of the crease rule, etc

 

[c9777666]

The Devils cup win in 1995 ?
The Florida Panthers cup run in 1996?

Personally, the dead puck era begain in october 1997. The first season of the dead puck era was 1997-98. It was the season where teams like the Sabres, Devils, Stars had success with the trap/stingy defense. Low scoring games were the norm. Scoring dried up dramatically. Goaltenders dominated(Hasek, Joseph, Belfour, etc), 2nd season of the crease rule, etc

What about 1996-97? Only 2 100-point players. Only 9 90-point scorers (compared to 1995-96's 12 100-point players and 22 players hit 90 points.

Scoring wasn't exactly high the year before 97-98.

High-scoring Colorado won the Cup, yet it was the Stanley Cup loser that teams emulated.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I usually think of it starting in 1997. There were elements in place prior to that, but the culture change happened after NJ and Florida made the Finals in consecutive seasons. That led to copycatting which seemed to sweep through the league one team at a time. By ‘98 the game looked different and by ‘00 it was true Dead Puck leaguewide.

 

[c9777666]

I usually think of it starting in 1997. There were elements in place prior to that, but the culture change happened after NJ and Florida made the Finals in consecutive seasons. That led to copycatting which seemed to sweep through the league one team at a time. By ‘98 the game looked different and by ‘00 it was true Dead Puck leaguewide.

The irony is that Florida lost the Cup Finals, yet teams were not copying the Cup winner. Jersey won the 95 Cup, 96 is a high-scoring year, defensive Florida gets swept by high-octane Colorado.......... and yet by 97 so many teams went dead puck as if Florida had won the Cup.

 

[Reindl87]

1996 1997 Session obviously. Inspiriered by some Playoffs series in the previous years.

 

[MS]

The 1994 lockout is the pretty clear defining point between high-scoring hockey of the 80s and early 90s and the trap hockey and defensive systems that followed.

Yes, you still had Pittsburgh scoring lots of goals for a couple years, but scoring league-wide fell through the floor starting in 1994-95.

To me, the Dead Puck Era is basically the 10-year period between the 1994 and 2004 work stoppages.

 

[Johnny Engine]

A while ago I posted a theory that April 24th, 1996 was the one clear chance to head off the dead puck era by getting the Bruins back into their first round series against the Panthers, but they lit up Ranford for 4 goals in the first 25 minutes despite outshooting Florida 42-26 in that game.

It's a leaky theory with little basis in fact, but I'll cling to it with my life.

 

[Professor What]

I've always felt that the 1996-97 season was the start of the DPE. Scoring was noticeably in 1993-94 from where it had been in previous seasons, but an average team was still well above three goals per game (3.24), which is a pretty good historical average. In the lockout shortened year, scoring was almost dead on that average at 2.99, but a rebound to 3.14 in 1995-96 prevents either of those seasons from being considered the start. The 1996-97 average of 2.92 might not be particularly low historically, but it was below the 3.00 average, it did mark a significant decline from the season before, and it was the beginning of the deeper decline that characterized the era. I can definitely see 1997-98 being used as the era's beginning, with the scoring average falling to 2.64, but all the pieces were in place by the season before.

 

[Video Nasty]

A switch just doesn’t get flipped overnight, so I’d say various parts of 1994-1995 through 1996-1997 simmered and brewed before allowing a full transition by the time the 1997-1998 season rolled around.

From then until scoring bottomed in the 2003-2004 season, the DPE was in full swing and the lockout/concentrated effort to increase scoring for 2005-2006 officially ended it.

If it can only be labeled as one season, I agree that 1997-1998 is the official start. But it wasn’t that clean. The three seasons before it and the success of certain teams led to the DPE actually being a thing and must be recognized as such.

 

[The Panther]

I would always say the 1997-98 season, so, that would be October 1997.

1995 was lower, for sure, but that's because it was a shortened, intra-divisional League, so that doesn't really count. 1995-96 was back to 1994-ish levels. Then, the transitional season was 1996-97. Scoring was down from earlier that year, but was still around League-historical average.

Finally, 1997-98 was the real first DPE season.

 

[MadLuke]

16	2005-06	NHL	1230	3.08	1.03	5.85	17.68	82.32	29.9	27.0	.901	2.92
17	2003-04	NHL	1230	2.57	0.70	4.24	16.46	83.54	28.0	25.5	.911	2.46
18	2002-03	NHL	1230	2.65	0.73	4.42	16.43	83.57	28.3	25.7	.909	2.54
19	2001-02	NHL	1230	2.62	0.65	4.13	15.77	84.23	27.5	25.0	.908	2.51
20	2000-01	NHL	1230	2.76	0.76	4.59	16.64	83.36	27.6	25.0	.903	2.65

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

21	1999-00	NHL	1148	2.75	0.65	4.03	16.15	83.85	27.9	25.2	.904	2.64
22	1998-99	NHL	1107	2.63	0.69	4.38	15.81	84.19	27.8	25.2	.908	2.56
23	1997-98	NHL	1066	2.64	0.70	4.64	15.08	84.92	27.3	24.7	.906	2.53
24	1996-97	NHL	1066	2.92	0.67	4.10	16.27	83.73	29.7	26.9	.905	2.80
25	1995-96	NHL	1066	3.14	0.90	5.04	17.93	82.07	30.2	27.1	.898	3.04
26	1994-95	NHL	624	2.99	0.77	4.36	17.73	82.27	29.3	26.4	.901	2.89
27	1993-94	NHL	1092	3.24	0.90	4.85	18.64	81.36	30.2	27.1	.895	3.14
28	1992-93	NHL	1008	3.63	1.03	5.28	19.57	80.43	30.9	27.4	.885	3.53
29	1991-92	NHL	880	3.48	0.97	5.02	19.24	80.76	30.4	27.0	.888	3.37
30	1990-91	NHL	840	3.46	0.89	4.57	19.44	80.56	29.7	26.4	.886	3.35

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

It was not a clean decline making it a bit hard to pin point, the only thing that is clear is that all the bolded season are part of the DPE, when it is officially started is more debatable.

93-94 start to show the first sign after the crazy 80s and the really crazy 92-93 we have 3.24 goal a game, lowest since 73-74, but still higher than 2005-2006 season.

94-95 drop again but we are still above the 2006-2007 season scoring of 2.95 and 2005 and up you have 4-4 overtime helping scoring.

95-96, the Avs, Wings, Pens powerhouse make some comeback scoring, 96-97 it is starting and 97-98 is officially in.

I think if you put something else than the 97-98 season it would be about a direction/mentality more than the actual result, but it is the combination of 2 season in a row loosing 8% than 10% of the goal that occured.

 

[MadLuke]

High-scoring Colorado won the Cup, yet it was the Stanley Cup loser that teams emulated.

A bit like half the movie in the US for a while were emulation of Reservoir Dogs and very few (Pearl Harbor) emulated Titanic despite how much more successful it was, trying to manage a team to emulate having Sakic/Forsberg/Roy or one with Scott Mellanby and Stu Barnes, the second one seem to be something possible to emulate, that require less extraordinary even to goes just well (like drafting Lindros) and less money.

Say if you are Seattle's management, following the cups looser Vegas footstep instead of the Capitals winner against them seem the way to go.

 

[MarkusKetterer]

To me, it was 1996-97. It’s when there was a clear separation between the large- and small-market teams showing the financial capabilities. So the small-market teams had to trap and hold to grind out a win.

At that time your expected contenders were: Colorado, Detroit, Philadelphia, the Rangers, and Dallas, New Jersey (because of Brodeur), Toronto and St. Louis being dark horse candidates (some darker than others). All were big markets and could spend money, or were medium markets and the owner spent anyway.

 

[VanIslander]

1995.

I remember there was a lot of talk about how different the New Jersey Devils were playing.

Clogging the middle, the neutral-zone trap, stacking the blueline...

These were not very common until a non-star Devils team SWEPT a Red Wings squad that had six HHOF-headed stars, NJ playing a BORING but effective defensive game.

Florida later copied them.

 

[Retire91]

From memory it was the 95 finals for me. Seemed like everyone copied the trap or left wing lock after that win. You even had Yzerman going from competing for scoring titles transitioning to the trap. I remember even before that though the grabbing and hooking was off the charts. It was very hard to find space.

 

[Bryce Newman]

I'll go with 1997-98 because that's when scoring took a noticeable dive. But the truly "great" era of hockey ended in 1994 I think. 1995, 1996 and 1997 were still good but not as good as 1984-1994, but starting in 1998 the game took a big plunge.

As a Rangers fan, it's funny to me that the "dead puck era" coincided with the Rangers "dark years" perfectly where the team didn't make the playoffs again until the NHL returned in 2006. That was just a horrible time for me as a hockey fan. My team sucked, and the NHL itself sucked.

But yeah, I'd say the 7 season stretch of 1997-98- to 2003-2004 was the true "dead puck era". I remember noticing how different the game was in the 199-98 season really for the first time, so I'll go with that timeline.

 

[DeysArena]

The irony is that Florida lost the Cup Finals, yet teams were not copying the Cup winner. Jersey won the 95 Cup, 96 is a high-scoring year, defensive Florida gets swept by high-octane Colorado.......... and yet by 97 so many teams went dead puck as if Florida had won the Cup.

The difference is that Colorado was a legitimately good team. Florida was a mediocre team with a hot goalie.

Building a team like Colorado takes work. Copying Florida is so much easier.

 

[Staniowski]

I generally consider the DPE to be the 7 seasons beginning with '97-'98.

Scoring started to decline in '86-'87 and continued slowly until '03-'04.

Backing up to the start of the decline in scoring....I think it began with coaches focusing more on defense after 2 strong defensive teams made the Cup finals in '86. The Flames used a type of "trap" against the Oilers, and it was successful. The Habs were led up front by 2 forward lines centered by defensive specialists Carbonneau and Skrudland. These things were influential.

The increased importance of defense was slow and steady through the late '80s and early '90s. By the early '90s, many teams were playing elements of trap-style defense.

But it was the '95 playoff Devils who played the strongest defense that any team had in a long time, maybe ever up until that point. This team, and Lemaire in particular, probably had the biggest influence on the future of the NHL than anything else. The Devils, in '95, had a good skating team and could play a strong defense without being dirty.

When other teams adapted or copied the Devils, and had success, scoring really plummeted. A lot of teams were then utilizing a lot of interference, hooking, etc. as parts of their defensive strategy.

 

[BraveCanadian]

It started in full swing by '97. Obviously New Jersey was the start but after Florida showed you could be successful with a bunch of cast offs it really led to a lot of copy cats. Even though they lost, it was a lot cheaper to have a roster like Florida than a roster like the Avs and you still got to win some games.

Unfortunately, that led to an era that selected for size instead of talent, and a strong decline in the creativity of the league because everyone was playing it safe waiting for turnovers and mistakes instead of taking some risks to make something happen and win the game.

 

[GlitchMarner]

I consider '96-'97 to '03-'04 to be the Dead Puck Era. As people have said, the seeds were planted before the 1996 season, but it's hard to find two back-to-back seasons as drastically different as '96 and '97. 1996 had numerous 100-point scorers and star power across the League was arguably at peak level. 1997 was a lot closer to the years that would follow.

 

[Nerowoy nora tolad]

This sort of discussion always devolves into hemming and hawing because a change in thinking like this doesnt have a sudden on/off switch moment, its more a logistic curve with a start date and an end date. The end date where the league is fully DPE is obviously no earlier than 1996 and no later than 1998, and the beginning of the transition in my opinion centers nicely around 1993

Among the reasons I think 1993 works well as a start of the transition:

-Pittsburgh had just come off back to back championships where the final ingredient was application of a defensive system like the left-wing lock
-Although the raw scoring numbers were quite high it was noted by observers at the time that a lot of the scoring was being propped up by established teams beating up on the noncompetitive Senators, Sharks, Lightning.
-The cup champs set an example of team defensive play combined with top goaltending as the most important keys
-Most of the offensive leaning teams had early or ugly playoff endings (Wings, Nordiques, Penguins, Jets), with the notable exception of the LA Kings

 

[Bryce Newman]

So pretty much everyone agrees the dead puck era ended in 2004, but where it began exactly is a little fuzzy. I think we can all agree that the Devils winning in 1995 is where the "seeds" of the dead puck era started. I still maintain though the game didn't drastically change for the worse until the 1997-98 season.

 

[barbu]

It's not so much that teams copied the devils or the panthers, although that definitely was a factor. It's mostly that everyone discovered how far you could push the tolerance of refs. Or how lax they became.

 

[MadLuke]

It's not so much that teams copied the devils or the panthers, although that definitely was a factor. It's mostly that everyone discovered how far you could push the tolerance of refs. Or how lax they became.

It could be because the star player got it worst and were able to use it more and are over represented in footage, but when you look at footage in the 80s early 90s of how much hooking was going on, even in International tournament like the canada cups, I am really not sure if that is really what was going on.

 

[Nerowoy nora tolad]

It's not so much that teams copied the devils or the panthers, although that definitely was a factor. It's mostly that everyone discovered how far you could push the tolerance of refs. Or how lax they became.

IIRC there was a brief attempt to push back the free-for-all officiating standards, I think in 1997? but there was backlash from players around the league about "not understanding the new standard", very similar complaints that were heard again in 2006 and 2019 as the refs were sent with a mandate to tighten up.

The NHL finally transitioned to the four-man system with two referees in 1998-99